A feed drop is essentially a container attached to an animal feed conveying system. Any number of feed drops, from one to several hundred, may be attached to a single feed system and they are used to simultaneously dispense a preset amount of feed to each animal being fed. Feed dispensing from feed drops may be accomplished manually or automatically by pulling a tripping cable attached to all the feed drops. The animals may be fed from one to several times a day. After the feed drops are emptied and before the next feeding, the feed conveying system will be manually or automatically started and the feed will be deposited sequentially into each feed drop.
A typical feed drop discharge controller uses flexible cords, ropes or cables to which the feed drop dispensing device is attached. Such a feed drop is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,031,857, which is incorporated herein by reference. This dispensing device can be a pivoted door, a sliding door, a ball, a flap, a valve, etc. A flexible cord will adequately pull open a feed drop device but will not push the door back into place to close the feed drop opening. If any object, such as the feed itself, a feed pellet, a rock, or any other thing such as pulleys connected to the ropes malfunctioning interferes with the opening of the dispensing device, it may not completely close before the feed drop refilling begins. This is a serious problem. If the feed drop device does not close after the feed has been dispensed, the opening in the feed drop will allow additional feed to flow down to the animal while the feed conveying system is conveying feed. Feed may continue to flow through that open feed drop until the holding bin is emptied of several tons of feed. Some animals may get sick and die from overeating, feed is wasted and some animals will miss their scheduled feeding.
Consequently, there is a need for a new and improved opening and closing apparatus for a feed drop for solving the aforementioned problems.